North Korea's founding father Kim Il-sung died suddenly 20 years ago this week – 17 days before what would have been the first inter-Korean summit. The weeks leading up to his death – and even his funeral – were rare moments of opportunity for reconciliation, missed by South Korea and the US.

I met Kim Il-sung in his final weeks as part of a delegation of former heads of state and government led by a Washington-based NGO, the Summit Council for World Peace, supported by the Unification Church. In April 1994, the North Korean leader appeared in reasonably good health for a man of 82. However, I later learned he suffered from heart disease and knew he may not have much longer to live.

By this point, most of his power had been assumed by his son, who evidently had complete control over domestic policy. Yet the father made the key decisions on the DPRK’s relations with South Korea, China, Russia, Japan, and the US, which were critical for its foreign policy.

The final days

Kim Il-sung knew that only he could make the strategic changes in North Korea’s relationships with the South, as well as with the US and Japan. This could not be left for his son to attempt after his demise.

When I met Kim, he spoke fondly of Kim Jong-il, calling him a filial son who daily tape-recorded reports on what was happening in the country because his father had difficulty reading. But only the founder of the North Korean state could change the trajectory of the country’s relations with its neighbours so that the entire leadership and population would be obliged to follow.

In his final years, Kim Il-sung had seen the collapse of the Soviet Union (preceded by the USSR’s recognition of South Korea); China’s establishment of diplomatic relations with South Korea; and the rise of the DPRK nuclear issue into crisis proportions by May 1994.

Kim Jong-il and his father Kim Il-sung, right, in Pyongyang in 1982. Photograph: AP

He was quite aware that China, then led by Deng Xiaoping, had embarked on a serious economic transformation, loosening central control of the economy but with the Communist party retaining political control. He saw that while communism in Eastern Europe collapsed in 1989, the party remained in power in China. He likely realised he could not have his son inherit an uncertain and unstable international environment if these trends continued without the North undertaking its own dramatic policy initiatives to ensure its survival, in a new era, continuing socialism with DPRK characteristics but accompanied by careful economic reforms.

By 1993, the gravity of the nuclear issue caused the US to begin its first ongoing high-level diplomatic engagement with North Korea, represented by Ambassador Robert Gallucci. During my 1994 meeting with Kim Il-sung, it did not appear he had detailed knowledge of the DPRK’s nuclear programme and was dependent on others to inform him. Publicly, he denied their programme had anything other than peaceful intentions, but Kim was shrewd enough to realise he could turn a brewing crisis into a strategic opportunity.

Carter intervenes

From 1991, North Korea had issued several invitations to former president Jimmy Carter to visit Pyongyang. Each time Carter sought to accept the invitation the State Department shot down the idea, whether under James Baker or Warren Christopher. Finally, in early June 1994, Carter made another appeal to the president, Bill Clinton. Vice President Al Gore interceded and obtained Clinton’s reluctant approval for Carter to make the trip, as long as he did so in a private capacity.

Jimmy Carter at Pyongyang airport on his return to North Korea in 2010 to secure the release of a jailed American. Photograph: KCNA/Reuters

When Carter arrived in Pyongyang in mid-June at the height of the nuclear crisis, he built on the foundation of a discussion held a week earlier between scholar Selig Harrison and Kim Il-sung that broached the idea of freezing the North’s nuclear programme in exchange for proliferation-resistant light-water reactors. To Carter’s surprise, Kim agreed to shut down the programme in exchange for the reactors, as long as the US compensated the North for “lost energy production” through the provision of heavy fuel oil. Moreover, Kim agreed to meet South Korea’s then president, Kim Young-sam, for the first-ever inter-Korean summit.

Carter had fortunately brought a CNN film crew to Pyongyang, enabling him to appear live on international television to announce he had arrived at an agreement with Kim Il-sung that defused the nuclear crisis.

The announcement prevented the planned US dispatch of 10,000 additional troops, along with stealth fighters, long-range bombers, an additional carrier battle group to the region and the evacuation of American civilians from the South.

Carter’s visit limited the Clinton administration’s policy options, making a military response not credible and ensuring Russian and Chinese resistance to UN Security Council sanctions. Moreover, Carter in effect was telling the world that Kim Il-sung was a reasonable man who accepted a nuclear freeze, and that negotiations with the paramount leader in any society were preferable to confrontation and heightened tensions.

Carter personally believed, as did many others (however reluctantly), that his visit prevented a second Korean War. Carter believed that power should be subordinated to diplomacy in solving conflicts among nations.

Carter crossed the DMZ back to South Korea, where he met President Kim Young-sam and organised a summit between the leaders, scheduled for 25 July 1994. In the meantime, the US formally confirmed Carter’s agreement with the DPRK and began a months-long negotiation, culminating with the October 1994 Agreed Framework and the establishment of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (Kedo). This agreement held, with difficulty, through 2002, when it finally fell apart due mutual accusations of non-adherence to its terms.

North Korean soldiers pose for a picture in front of portraits of the late leaders Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang. Photograph: Vincent Yu/AP

The immediate aftermath of Carter’s visit was highly auspicious for South Korea. For Kim Young-sam, a historical opportunity had fallen into his lap. He was to become the first South Korean president to meet the North Korean leader. If Kim Il-sung was able to change the strategic trajectory of the North’s relations with the US, a successful inter-Korean summit could conceivably yield numerous mutual benefits leading to ongoing inter-Korean engagement, exchange and commercial activity.

Death of an agreement

On 7 July my colleague Antonio Betancourt, the Summit Council’s secretary general, was in Pyongyang to discuss the details of opening an office - a move that had been agreed upon in principle. The next day he was scheduled to meet Kim Yong-sun, the North Korean number three, to sign the agreement.

But the next morning he was told the meeting could not take place. He left for Beijing the next day, but upon arrival at the airport he was met by DPRK embassy officials who told him that Kim Il-sung had died overnight. Now he knew why his scheduled meeting with Kim Yong-sun had been cancelled.

Betancourt remained in Beijing and went to the North Korean embassy to offer his condolences. Shortly afterward, he unexpectedly received an invitation to attend Kim Il-sung’s funeral – probably the only American to do so.

As no foreign TV crews were permitted to cover the funeral, CNN phoned Betancourt in Pyongyang (calls to the North in those days had to be routed through Canada) and he was interviewed live by Larry King, describing the atmosphere on the day of the funeral.

Betancourt, who had met Kim Il-sung five times, later conveyed his condolences directly to Kim Jong-il in a reception after the funeral.

The inter-Korean summit scheduled for 25 July obviously could not take place, but it did not mean a summit was impossible in the future. South Korean president, Kim Young-sam had a choice to make: he could use this historic moment to follow correct diplomatic procedure and offer his condolences over Kim Il-sung’s death or he could assume, as his key advisors argued, that Kim Jong-il would not last long and appease South Korean right-wing voters by fuelling hostilities with the North.

Kim Jong-un visits the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun on 8 July 2014 to mark the 20th anniversary of the death of his grandfather, Kim Il-sung. Photograph: AP

Kim Young-sam not only refused to offer condolences, but his prime minister labeled the deceased North Korean president a “war criminal”; the South Korean government blamed Kim Il-sung for starting the Korean war; and the military was put on high alert.

North Korea went ballistic and the possibility of building mutual trust evaporated. At the UN, flags were at half-mast, and President Bill Clinton and other world leaders extended their condolences, but Kim Young-sam remained firm, barring condolence visits to the North and even private expressions of grief by citizens.

If Kim Young-sam had gone to Pyongyang for the funeral, he could have changed the trajectory of South Korea’s relations with the North. He could have met Kim Jong Il and received a commitment that the inter-Korean summit would take place in the near future.

Instead, his actions rubbed salt in the North’s wound. The lasting personal impact upon Kim Jong-il of Seoul’s behaviour after his father's death should not be underestimated. It also blatantly showed how South Korea's policy to the North was submerged in domestic politics.

A lesson for today

In his final years, Kim Il-sung observed that Deng Xiaoping’s reforms were transforming China – without the Communist party losing power. There were strong indications the elder Kim wanted to put North Korea on a new track to be led by his son, emulating certain Chinese reforms but with North Korean characteristics.

Had Kim Young-sam been attuned to the historic opportunities at hand, and had the Clinton administration appreciated the strategic benefits of encouraging North Korean reform, perhaps together they could have fostered an environment in which reforms were possible.

If the agreements had succeeded, who knows where potential DPRK reforms could have led? Kim Il-sung had already instructed Kim Jong-il to negotiate on the nuclear programme – their only real card – in exchange for significant political and economic benefits.

Yet, after the elder Kim’s death, the Kim Young-sam government wrongly believed the North would quickly collapse and chose not to encourage its existing leadership to potentially engage in reforms.

Kim Il-sung’s untimely death and Kim Young-sam’s failure to realise the strategic opportunity at hand have haunted inter-Korean relations over the past 20 years.

Tensions were briefly ameliorated only after Kim Jong-il’s summit with Kim Young-sam’s successor, Kim Dae-jung, in June 2000. That opening soon passed and grandson Kim Jong-un, now in power, has yet to meet even his first foreign leader. But a similar opportunity could present itself again and this time the US and the South Korean president, Park Geun-hye, would be well advised not to blow it.

Notes

• The Summit Council for World Peace, an association of former heads of state and government, was founded in 1987 by the Rev Sun Myung Moon (who was born in northern Korea).

• The severity of Kim Il-sung’s heart disease, largely unknown in June 1994, is part of a story line in the currently airing SBS K-Drama, Doctor Stranger, popular in the South and also the North.

• Betancourt told Larry King that DPRK officials wanted to follow what Kim Il-sung had agreed with Jimmy Carter, but were furious that Kim Young-sam made it a crime for South Koreans to express condolences.

• Bradley Martin, in Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty, writes that Kim Jong-il, in a recorded conversation with pro-DPRK Korean-Japanese officials in 1998, "called Kim Young-sam 'a filthy dirt-bag'. 'One thing I feel sorry for him,' the North Korean leader told his visitors, 'is that he surrounded himself with bad advisers. When Leader Kim Il-sung passed away, Kim Young-sam could not attend the funeral because of his advisers. I hear Kim himself regrets having bad helpers. When Leader Kim Il-sung died, I discussed with Secretary Kim Yong-sun what to do if Kim Young-sam wanted to attend the funeral, and made a detailed plan to receive him. But he did not come, and we were very upset with him. If he had any wisdom, he would have come to the funeral. If he had come, he might have taken over North Korea and become president of a united Korea. What an idiot'.”

Mark Barry is a lecturer in management and political science at Barrytown College of UTS in New York, and has followed US-DPRK relations for the last 24 years. Follow him on Twitter @drmarkpbarry